P2D2 program goes global

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By Luke Smucker

Pontiac Daily Leader - Pontiac, IL

By Luke Smucker

Posted Jan. 2, 2014 at 9:11 AM

By Luke Smucker
Posted Jan. 2, 2014 at 9:11 AM

Pontiac, Ill.

Brazil, Paraguay and Turkey are just a few of the countries who have shown interest in what Pontiac Township High School students are doing with the National Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal program (P2D2).

The program is a collaborative effort between students, communities, local pharmacies, police departments, hospitals and city officials to educate the public about the harm done to the environment through the misuse and abuse of pharmaceuticals. It provides communities with a proper method of pharmaceutical disposal that effectively reduces the misuse and ensures the quality of water and wildlife.

“We’ve seen a lot of growth in Brazil and Paraguay particularly,” said Paul Ritter, PTHS ecology teacher and P2D2 national program coordinator. “Our students were working with the Tupinambás Senior Scout Troop, which held a jamboree in which 5,000 scouts came in from around Brazil and Paraguay and the scout troop held a number of sessions about the program. It sounds like they are going to make the program work in quite a few areas of both countries.”

The Brazil troop has a group of scouts who Ritter says are eager to spread the word about the program and PTHS students work with them primarily via the social applications Facebook and Skype. Students created the Facebook account page to exchange ideas.

“Facebook has become a valuable tool to the program and we saw a lot of movement through social media this year,” Ritter said. “We had a lot of interest in the country of Bahrain. The country’s ministry of housing and environment contacted our kids about starting a program there. Students from the Caribbean Environmental Leadership Group are in the beginning stages of the program too. Getting organized and getting setup has taken them a little bit longer than they had anticipated, but they are reaching out to us to get their program going.”

If all of these start-ups weren’t enough, students are also trying to work out a new program in Turkey. A teacher in the country invited PTHS students to come and speak at an environmental symposium in April. Although the students can’t be their physically, they are making a compromise.

“Our kids are going to Skype into it,” Ritter said. “I think we’ve got about seven hours difference, so we might have to get up a little early that day, but we’re going to do that and our kids are going to be presenting and speaking down at Heartland a couple times — there is just so much going on.”

Within the United States, the program is taking off too. Ritter says his students are constantly being asked to speak and put on programs. In fact on Jan. 8, PTHS students are scheduled to visit the Indiana Attorney General’s Office to present their proposal on having the entire state of Indiana participate in the program and having students involved. Ritter says a teacher in Green Castle, Ind., wants to move forward with the program with his students. PTHS children also went to the American Veterinary Medicine Association and presented about both Operation Endangered Species — a re-population and re-location alligator snapping turtle project — and P2D2. Ritter says the AVMA embraced both ideas and students are exploring that with them as well.

Page 2 of 2 - “My hat goes off to our students,” Ritter said. “Any time a group calls, or messages us on the Internet, our kids have made the time to talk with them, or get whatever tools those people need. They will come in during their study hall or their lunch and even at home — The Facebook group makes it easy for them to constantly remain in contact.”

None of these things would be possible, however, without the local community and Livingston County. Ritter says the P2D2 program is now available in Dwight, Fairbury, Pontiac and Chenoa. Data collected by Nick Sartoris the manager of Sartoris Super Drug in Pontiac, show the county is pulling in a steady stream somewhere around 1,000 pounds in pharmaceuticals per year.

Data shows the first year of the program, 2008, there was a total of 434 ponds of pharmaceutical waste collected. This amount does not include the containers the pharmaceuticals were stored in. The containers are a recycled separately. The second year, however, after the program began to catch on with the media and around the area, that number increased more than 200 percent to 1,047 pounds. These included deposits from Pontiac, Fairbury, Dwight and El Paso. The amount peaked the following year in 2010, when the program gathered 1,147 pounds and has remained steadily around 1,000 pounds since then.

“When we first developed the program, numbers weren’t quite as productive as they are now,” Sartoris said. “However as we began to advertise the program more, the numbers began to increase. Today, I would say about 10 percent of Livingston County contribute and participate in the program.”

The numbers collected by Sartoris through Livingston County are very valuable to the program. Ritter says the students use what is taken in over a year in Livingston County to predict what other populations would submit.

“For example, with the St. Louis P2D2 program, they have 1.5 million people in the surrounding area, so when we put that program in, one of the very important things was to estimate what kind of volume would come in so they could be prepared for that,” Ritter said. “When they moved forward, that was a big thing and I believe they are in all of the precincts of the St. Louis Metro area now. We used Pontiac and Livingston County as a measuring stick to give them an estimate what they could expect to see when an average group is turning stuff in.”

To Sartoris, the numbers mean people are continuing to dispose of medial waste in a way that doesn’t pollute the ground water and eco system.

“Whatever we can keep out of our environment means a better future for our children,” Sartoris said. “It also means people are getting their unwanted or unused medicines out of the cabinets. Children cant’ have accidents in the medicine cabinet if things are disposed of regularly. If you have something you don’t take anymore, you might as well get rid of it because a lot of accidents and accidental poisons come about because people don’t remember what’s in the medicine cabinet.”